


A Grievance with Goo

by Anefi



Series: Anefi's Transformers Works [11]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alien Planet, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Gen, Humor, Mind-Altering Parasites, Ooze, Other, Transform or Treat, Transform or Treat 2020, background Misfire/Fulcrum
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-11-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:29:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27381973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anefi/pseuds/Anefi
Summary: The Scavengers were on Flegr-2 barely long enough for the engines to cool down, but by the time they left, it was already too late.
Series: Anefi's Transformers Works [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1918825
Comments: 4
Kudos: 21





	A Grievance with Goo

**Author's Note:**

> Late pinch hit gift for [random-kido](https://random-kido.tumblr.com/), who wanted the Scavs to visit an alien planet and find a friend! Happy belated Halloween, I hope you like this :)
> 
> Huge thanks to [helloshepard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/helloshepard) for beta <3

The planet looked okay from space. Crystals on the surface were usually a good sign; if the atmospheric composition was right they sometimes had enough chemical energy to refine into decent energon, and they tended not to have the kind of flopping organic life that creeped Fulcrum out so much. The forest of needle-thin crystals was pretty, with bristling, iridescent purple fractals glittering in the light of the distant triple moons. As soon as the cargo loading ramp started to drop, Misfire reached out, snapped off a branch, and popped it in his intake.

“Bismuthy,” he said, chewing. “Nice arsenic zing.”

“Zinc?” Krok eyed a crystal speculatively.

Misfire swallowed. “Zing,” he clarified, and added, “Kind of sticky,” which was the last thing they needed.

Fulcrum caught his hand as he reached out for more; he hadn’t given up, yet, like Krok had. “If you’d just wait _two breems_ for me to run an analysis—”

“Boring,” Misfire sang. He feinted left, but Fulcrum knew that move. Unfortunately, Misfire was taller and the gravity was low, so he nabbed another shard when he jumped for it. “Ha!” He stuffed it in his mouth and chewed vigorously while Fulcrum made a face and stuffed some dust into the analyzer.

Then the ramp finished dropping, and instead of a reassuring “clank!” or the more usual long wheeze and rattling thump, it landed on the surface with a distinct “splorch.”

Krok reluctantly looked down at the landing site and found the edge of the ramp sunk in thick, black tar.

“I’m out,” Fulcrum said flatly. He slapped the analysis pad onto Spinister’s pauldron on his way back into the ship.

Spinister checked the screen. “Blue,” he said.

Krok wasn’t sure if that was good. “Is that good?”

Spinister shrugged.

Krok opened the team comms channel.

KR: Fulcrum, it’s blue.

FU: What? Oh. Blue is fine. Not harmful, but not great.

FU: I’ll be on the bridge with Crankcase. Call if anything tries to kill you.

MF: Aw, so you can come to our rescue?

FU: No, so we can leave and save ourselves.

MF: :-[

The ship wasn’t sinking into the oily goo on the surface, so it couldn’t be too deep. After some deliberation, Krok snapped off a crystal twig, dipped it in the muck, and held it out for Spinister to take.

“I’m not eating that,” he said.

“No—to analyze, Spin. You have the thing.”

“Oh.” Spinister handed him the analyzer and went back into the cargo bay. Krok sighed.

Poking at the sludge had stirred up a thick, horrible smell to go with it. Krok gagged a little and turned off his olfactory sensors while he loaded in the sample. After a little thoughtful humming, the pad chirped and flashed orange.

KR: Orange?

FU: Do NOT let Misfire put that in his mouth.

Krok reached out and hauled Misfire back by the collar fairing from where he’d been crouched to stick his finger into the goo. “Put it down,” he said.

Misfire squawked. “Krok! I wasn’t! He’s fine!”

“You were thinking about it,” Krok said repressively, and then belatedly registered the last part. “ _Who’s_ fine?”

In the cage of Misfire’s dripping-black fingers, a little ball also coated in quivering goo stared up at them with shining white optics. A high-pitched sound emanated from it, sort of a, “Meep?”

“Absolutely not,” Krok said. “Get rid of it. We’re leaving.”

“Aw, Krok—”

“You can take as much of the crystal stuff as you can reach from the ramp before we lift off. Twenty breems.”

“Meep?” the ball said dubiously.

“Sorry, buddy,” Misfire said. “Nice knowing ya.” A little reluctantly, he shook his hand gently over the end of the ramp until it slid off, back into the ooze. He wiped off his fingers on his thigh plating, which did absolutely nothing but spread the gunk to more surface area.

Krok resisted the urge to put his hand over his optics. “On second thought, I’ll get your crystals. You go straight to the wash racks.”

Misfire perked up, wings twitching. “Really?”

“Don’t. Touch. Anything,” Krok said.

Misfire went in, Spinister came back out to help Krok fill a crate with crystals, and with a truly horrendous sucking sound that may have actually taken off some of the landing gear, the WAP lifted off and they were back in the cold, sterilizing vacuum of space.

Which should have been the end of it.

When Krok saw a long streak of black ooze dripping across the closed ramp of the cargo hold a cycle later, he told Misfire to clean it up and considered it solved.

When smudges like fingerprints showed up in the crew quarters hall, he told Misfire _and_ Fulcrum to take care of it.

When he and Spinister were hanging out in the crew lounge and he heard a quiet, but very distinctive, “Meep?” That’s when he started to suspect they had a problem.

“Misfire!” he yelled.

Something landed on the floor of Misfire’s room with a thump that echoed through the bulkheads. After some surreptitious clanking, Fulcrum casually poked his head out into the hall. “Krok? Did you need something?”

Krok sighed.

KR: Misfire, did you bring one of those goo balls onto the ship from Flegr-2?

MF: Who?

KR: The ooze planet. With the purple crystals.

SP: Do we have any more of those crystals in the cargo hold? They’re good.

FU: Uh—no. Nope. We do not. No.

Krok had not rolled off the line yesterday.

KR: Emergency meeting. Now.

Fulcrum and Misfire shuffled into the room meekly. Crankcase stomped down from the bridge with Grimlock, who stopped just inside the door, saurian head swinging. “Smells bad,” he said.

“Does it?” Crankcase said.

Krok realized he’d never turned his olfactory sensors back on after they had left the planet. When he did, he regretted it. That same rancid smell from the ooze pervaded the lounge. 

“Misfire,” Krok said.

“It’s not that bad,” Fulcrum said hastily.

“ _Misfire_.”

Misfire looked up. “I didn’t bring it inside,” he said, shifting guiltily. “I just found one in the cargo bay.”

“They are really cute,” Fulcrum said.

He winced.

Krok saw it.

“ _They?_ ”

“Friendly, too,” Crankcase said.

“Crankcase, you too? I expect this from—” Krok paused. Actually, no, he didn’t. “From Misfire,” he said slowly. “Fuclrum, you _hate_ organics that secrete things.”

“Well,” Fulcrum said. “I mean. Maybe at first.”

“You screamed,” Misfire said. “You screamed and ran around and said you were going to tell Krok—”

Fulcrum waved it away. “Sure, yeah. But then.”

“Then you ate some crystals,” Misfire said, nodding.

“Bad,” Grimlock said. He started backing up, but Crankcase leapt behind him to trigger the lock on the door.

“It’ll be okay, Grimsy,” Crankcase said. “We saved some crystals for you.” Misfire and Fulcrum joined him in slowly advancing towards Grimlock, step by simultaneous step.

“Spin,” Krok said, low and urgently, “Spin, something’s wrong with them. We have to—”

“Don’t worry,” Spinister said from close behind him. The awful organic smell grew stronger. Krok whirled to face him, fuel pump seized with the feeling he already knew what he was going to find. “I gave you some earlier,” Spinister said, gesturing at the bowl of silicon chips between them--half of which, Krok was just noticing, were iridescent purple.

One of Spinister’s hands was cupped around a little ball with wide bright eyes, dripping with thick black ooze.

“Meep,” it said.

Grimlock was roaring behind him, but suddenly, Krok didn’t understand why. He had probably overreacted, yelling at Misfire before. The little goo ball was really pretty cute.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [decepticon-propaganda](https://decepticon-propaganda.tumblr.com/) on tumblr, come say hello!


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